DC Porcupine

2012-05-22

Ron Moten’s New Show is Incredibly Listenable

Peaceoholics co-founder, Ward 7 GOP candidate, and general local politics player-operator Ron Moten has had a show on 1480 AM for around two months. I caught it for the first time today, and man, what a treat.

Moten had City Paper managing editor Mike Madden and Washington Times reporter Jeffrey Anderson on as guests, but they were there mainly to serve as foils for Moten’s monologues on Washington and politics.

There was also some life advice thrown in. In one segment, Moten says it’s important to have haters because even the grass needs horse manure to grow.

Moten’s musical choices included him singing a capella Chuck Brown in the intro, and one of the DC-slanted spins on popular songs that he likes to produce. I always thought Kanye West’s “Power” could have done with more references to resigned mayoral aide Gerri Mason Hall.

The show has a tendency to turn into the Ron Moten Grievance Revue, but, as a Fenty partisan, Moten has more than enough grudges to fill the hour.

Still, his tendency to dig up the hatchet means you have to come to the show with lots of context to fully enjoy it. In today’s episode, he made several references to Mary Cheh’s investigation of his role in the donation of a DC fire truck to Sosua, Dominican Republic. That investigation finished in early 2010.

It will be interesting to see how long 1480 AM can continue Moten’s show without a legal threat (or, since he’s a candidate, violation of equal time provisions). In today’s show, he eagerly called out people whose alleged shady dealings he doesn’t think has been adequately investigated by the US Attorney’s Office or the media, including Cheh and City Administrator Allen Lew.

Until then, Moten’s show is on at 11 a.m. on Tuesdays. You can listen online on their website.

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Post Finally Says De Borchgrave Plagiarized

It took a little while, but Erik Wemple finally called Washington Times’s columnist Arnaud de Borchgrave’s lifting what is is: plagiarism. No need for “originality deficit” weaseling here.

The AP does the same in its story. For his part, De Borchgrave remains pretty unapologetic. Here’s his statement to the AP:

If I dropped a few quote marks inadvertently, mea culpa. Everyone makes mistakes.

Elsewhere, the plagiarism story has already made its way into de Borchgrave’s Wikipedia page.

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City Paper Gets Award Nominations for Housing Complex, Annotated DC Issue

In a list out today from the Association of Alternative Newsmedia, City Paper grabbed four nominations:

Individual Blog: Lydia DePillis’s development and real estate blog Housing Complex.
Innovation/Format Buster: Annotated Guide to 2011.
Arts Criticism: Reviews by Chris Klimek.
Investigative Reporting: Jason Cherkis’s coverage of the child welfare system.

Big shrug on the Annotated Guide to 2011, which seemed like a remixed Best Of issue, but otherwise, good deal.

You can see links to the pieces that made up City Paper’s nominated packages on AAN’s site.

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Plagiarist Takes 3-Month Leave from WaTimes Column

The saga of Arnaud de Borchgrave continues. Erik Wemple, who wrote the original stories on de Borchgrave’s plagiarizing, notices that the Times has run a story saying that de Borchgrave will take a three-month leave from his column to write his memoirs:

“Everybody makes mistakes, and I take responsibility for mine,” de Borchgrave says in the article.

The article credits “two online news sites”—presumably Wemple and Salon—for noticing de Borchgrave’s lifting. The Times, like the Post, declines to describe de Borchgrave’s actions as plagiarizing.

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Internet TBD Struggles, Hat TBD Thrives

TBD may be down to one employee, but it has hats enough for several more. David Heyman spotted these remnants of TBD out in the wild at Taste of Arlington.

Via Steve Buttry

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Buzzfeed Opening DC Office

Get ready to hop on that gravy train. Fishbowl reports that Buzzfeed is opening a bureau in DC.

Buzzfeed editor Ben Smith tells FBDC that he’s looking to hire a “a talented, heavyweight player-coach” (this lingo!). Smith says he’ll do the hiring this summer.

Smith will also be sending one or two reporters to join the office when the presidential campaign ends.

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Speaking of media business lingo, the former boss at my company was fond of saying, when he heard an idea he liked and wanted implemented, “Let’s turbo this.” Try it out.

2012-05-21

Post Ombuds: No, Again, the Post Doesn’t Hate Catholics

How many times must Post ombuds Patrick Pexton labor to defend the Post’s coverage of peoples’ pet issues? He’s been at it so long, he’s got his apologetics columns down to a formula:

Pexton introduces vague complaints from readers about coverage of an issue.
Pexton says the complainants are wrong.
To placate them, Pexton admits they have some legitimate, though unquantifiable, grievance.

Pexton’s latest column, on whether the Post is anti-Catholic, is a great example. Here’s why readers think the Post is anti-Catholic, according to Pexton:

The Post didn’t cover the March for Life enough.
The Post ran a story about a priest refusing a lesbian woman communion at her mother’s funeral.
Readers didn’t like the Post’s coverage of the contraception mandate.
The Post ran an ad from an atheist group urging Catholics to leave the church over its policies on womens’ issues.

Pexton responds, correctly, that the Post will run ads from pretty much anybody, and that the Post covers Catholic issues all the time (here’s one example).

That’s all fine, but here comes the very Pextonian twist. After all but saying that whoever is complaining in that week’s column doesn’t know a thing about newspapers and should never email him again, he always improbably admits that they do have a point (previously):

But sometimes The Post’s reporting and even editorials fall short in conveying the passion with which many Catholics hold their views, whether they be against the contraception mandate, gay marriage, and abortion or in favor of aid to the poor. It doesn’t mean that Post reporters or editorialists have to embrace those views, but they should accurately explain them in a ways all readers can understand. That, after all, is also part of getting at the truth.

The Post needs to better convey how intently Catholics hold their views, even after explaining them? Here’s how I imagine a Pexton-edited religion story would go:

Remember when we told you in the last paragraph that the bishop doesn’t like the contraception mandate? Just to reiterate: he really really doesn’t like it.

Pexton can be a tough ombudsman, especially in his coverage of Elizabeth Flock and of the Post’s relationship with the Chinese government. If there’s ever evidence of actual anti-Catholic bias at the Post—a fabricated story or quote, for example—Pexton’s the man to go after it. But he’s wasting his time if he thinks he can ever convince people that an issue as important to them as their religion is being fairly covered by the Post.

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New City Paper Food Critic Explains Lack of Anonymity

Oh, how happy I was to nab a picture of City Paper’s new Young & Hungry food critic, Jessica Sidman, right after they announced her hiring. So crafty getting a picture of a food critic, and soon, restaurants across the city would grab the picture from my site and post it in their kitchen. Maybe I’d get a free dessert out of the deal.

Alas, it wasn’t to be. As Eater DC reported, Sidman, unlike predecessor Chris Shott, won’t be anonymous. In her first day on the job, Sidman explains why:

The purpose of anonymity is to be able to relate the experience of the “average diner.” But you don’t need a professional critic for that anymore. There are thousands of “average diners” sharing their experiences every day on Yelp. What a good food writer can give you is hopefully something more: storytelling, analysis, context, and news.

Sidman also promises stories that show restaurants as “newsworthy examples of ambition, hubris, criminality, and cultural exchange.” Emphasis on the ambition, hubris, and criminality, please.

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Post Opens Indictment Season Strong

The Gray-Jeffrey Thompson investigation is finally getting going again after a few quiet months, with Gray’s assistant treasurer Thomas W. Gore being charged today for campaign finance violations and destruction of evidence.

The Post’s Del Quentin Wilber and Nikita Stewart’s story wins both in speed and depth of information, but there are many scoops to come.

Also interestingly for the Post, Gore is charged with destroying a book containing notes about his payments to Sulaimon Brown on March 6, 2011—the same day the Post published a story that blew the Brown-Gray connection open. Did the Post spook Gore into destroying evidence?

What a summer!

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Post Hires New National Security Editor

Doug Frantz, an investigative reporter and former managing editor at the Los Angeles Times, is joining the Post as national security editor, Romenesko reports. According to the memo about Frantz’s hiring, he starts on June 11.